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This study arose from a combination of chance, curiosity, and the sudden leisure afforded by retirement. Patrick Khoo unwittingly initiated it in 2008 by asking me to find out why his (Straits Chinese) grandfather had jointly donated a plane to the British flying services in 1916. Previously unaware of the empire’s part in financing Britain’s first air war, initial research discovered a comprehensive survey of 1914–18 presentation aircraft compiled from surviving Royal Flying Corps records.1 Attributions suggested that although colonial governments had gifted some, the overseas public and local rulers had subscribed many more. Curiosity about the underlying reasons for such support led me to widen the scope of my enquiry beyond Malaya and the Straits Settlements, to wherever, and whomsoever, had happened to contribute substantially to the campaign.

Since aircraft were designated after the communities, areas or individuals presenting them, and subscribers put forward their own presentation names, I was drawn by what this might tell us about identities, and how they related to voluntary association with the ‘imperial’ war effort. The First World War, when viewed from a later British perspective, seemed to present a sort of hiatus, or terrible diversion, in the life of the British Empire—some four years of bloody involvement in a catastrophic and all-consuming continental conflict, lodged in between generally successful and profitable British global expansion and the beginnings of that empire’s long decline (just as it attained its greatest geographical extent). I wondered what gaps in the wartime history of the British Empire an account of the overseas fundraising might fill, and why exactly efforts concentrated so much on aircraft?

Because the Imperial Aircraft Flotilla campaign of 1915–18 was above all a voluntary and press driven affair, material for the country case studies largely derived from the British Library’s extensive newspaper holdings, supplemented (or replaced, where there was no local press coverage) by official papers held at the National Archives, Kew. That and other archival material—along with Evelyn Wrench’s published memoirs, also supplied the story from the London end. My primary debt is thus collectively due to the many librarians, research staff and archivists involved, especially those of the old Colindale Newspaper Library, my habitual haunt before its closure; but also those based at the main British Library, Imperial War Museum, and Royal Air Force Museum.

Former colleagues from the Research Department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (more recently known as Research and Analysis Department) also helped. Sally Healy bravely struggled through inchoate initial versions of early chapters, as well as casting an expert eye over the Abyssinia story; and I am additionally most grateful to David Howlett for the benefit of his helpful comments and suggestions on Empire and Commonwealth, Pacific and Antipodean matters. Any mistakes are, of course, my own.

I thank copyright holders for permission to reproduce images, and would particularly like to express my appreciation to David Payne for allowing me to include the splendid photograph of his grandfather in Malaya XV not only within the book, but also on the cover design. (For the photographic composition of which, my thanks to Su Khoo.) If in any instance I have failed to identify copyright material, despite my best endeavours, I would be glad of information that would allow me to credit ownership. In addition, I gratefully acknowledge the good advice on publishing given by Margaret Ling, and the unobtrusive support of Jakob Horstmann in the completion of the manuscript, and Valerie Lange’s patient efficiency in shepherding me in the publication process.

Shaped by my own past as much as anyone, I offer this monograph to the memory of my father, who worked on aircraft in the Second World War, and that of Dr. T.H.R. (Dick) Cashmore, long-time head of the FCO’s Africa Research Unit and my old mentor on British colonial history and administrative practice.

Margaret Hall

May 2017

1 Raymond Vann and Colin Waugh, ‘Presentation Aircraft 1914-1918’, Cross and Cockade GB Journal, special issue, 14:2 (1983)